When Is It Okay to Joke?

The ability to laugh, we know, is vital. To do so in the midst of
terror and anxiety is even more important. The following excerpt is from an essay titled
"Joking With God in a Fragile World," by University of Chicago professor Wendy
Doniger. It's published in Walking With God in a Fragile World, a collection
of original pieces by spiritual writers and theologians reflecting on their relationship
with God in these uncertain times.

We may make terror tolerable by looking it in the eye and joking about
it. By joking we reframe the episode in our own terms, transforming it from a passive
suffering thrust upon us into an active response to the world; we take possession of it by
retelling it in terms that the perpetrator could not.... gallows humor is designed
precisely to uncover the naked truth, however painful that flaying may be. Terry Southern
reported a conversation he had with Stanley Kubrick about Dr. Strangelove, in which
Kubrick told him that he was going to make a film about "our failure to understand
the dangers of nuclear war." He said that he had thought of the story as a
"straightforward melodrama" until one morning when he "woke up and realized
that nuclear war was too outrageous, too fantastic, to be treated in any conventional
manner." He said he could only see it now as "some kind of hideous
joke."...

After September 11, many people whose initial, quite understandable
disinclination was never to get into an airplane again, overcame that nervousness by
saying, to themselves and others, "If we stop flying, they win." This formulaic
statement became so common that Chicago's Second City comedy troupe developed a
sketch in which a "clay arts" teacher insists to his depressed class, "If
we don't glaze our pottery today, they win," while the producers of
Fox's MADtv rejected a stronger version about "sleazy lawyers declaring that
they should defy terrorists by living their lives normally and so it was their patriotic
duty to sue their mothers." I want to say, if we stop laughing at our own tragedies,
they win. But if we can laugh at ourselves in the face of the humorless bullies on both
sides of the war, then, as the little boy rightly remarks at the end of Life is
Beautiful, "We won." To do this is to say, "Your grim, humorless world
is not going to destroy our fragile world of self-mockery. We can still mock ourselves,
and you. You are not going to get us. We win." The situation is hopeless but not
serious, and, if war is play, peace is all that is serious.

Related Stories

Like what you're reading? Get Sojourners E-Mail updates!

Sojourners Comment Community Covenant

I will express myself with civility, courtesy, and respect for every member of the Sojourners online community, especially toward those with whom I disagree, even if I feel disrespected by them. (Romans 12:17-21)

I will express my disagreements with other community members' ideas without insulting, mocking, or slandering them personally. (Matthew 5:22)

I will not exaggerate others' beliefs nor make unfounded prejudicial assumptions based on labels, categories, or stereotypes. I will always extend the benefit of the doubt. (Ephesians 4:29)

I will hold others accountable by clicking "report" on comments that violate these principles, based not on what ideas are expressed but on how they're expressed. (2 Thessalonians 3:13-15)

I understand that comments reported as abusive are reviewed by Sojourners staff and are subject to removal. Repeat offenders will be blocked from making further comments. (Proverbs 18:7)